SITTWE, Myanmar: Hundreds of people sought shelter and higher ground in western Myanmar on Friday ahead of a looming cyclone forecast to bring high winds and a storm surge to the eastern Bay of Bengal.
Cyclone Mocha is forecast to be the strongest to hit Myanmar in more than a decade, raising the prospect of a major humanitarian disaster.
The storm is predicted to make landfall on Sunday near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, according to India’s meteorological office, packing winds of up to 175 kilometres per hour.
The office predicted a storm surge of between 2 and 2.5 metres for the low-lying coastal region, which on the Bangladeshi side is home to sprawling camps hosting hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees.
Residents of low-lying villages in Rakhine flocked to the state capital Sittwe on Friday, with around a thousand preparing to shelter at a monastery, AFP correspondents said.
Some set down blankets and staked out sleeping places while unpacking provisions.
Thant Zaw, 42, said he had lost several family members when Cyclone Nargis ravaged southern Myanmar in 2008, killing more than 130,000 people.
“I told my family we should shelter at this monastery,” he told AFP. “I have six children and I can’t lose my family again.”
Military junta authorities were supervising evacuations from coastal villages along the Rakhine coast, according to state media, which did not say how many people had been moved.
Any boats leaving shore in Rakhine from Friday afternoon would face legal action, the junta said.
Floods and landslides
Heavy winds and rain could trigger flooding and landslides further inland in Myanmar and Bangladesh, the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs office said on Friday.
Around 6 million people across Rakhine and Myanmar’s northwest are already in need of humanitarian assistance, it added.
The cyclone looked set to pass near sprawling camps in Bangladesh home to almost one million Rohingya refugees who fled a Myanmar military crackdown in 2017.
Bangladeshi officials said on Friday that all mosques, learning centres and offices in the camps would be turned into cyclone shelters.
Bangladesh has yet to carry out any evacuations, but officials said hundreds of cyclone shelters have been readied to house evacuated people.
Cyclones are a regular and deadly menace on the coast of the northern Indian Ocean where tens of millions of people live.
Bangladesh was last hit by a superstorm in November 2007 when Cyclone Sidr ripped through the country’s southwest, killing more than 3,000 people and causing damage worth billions of dollars.
In May 2008 Cyclone Nargis left at least 138,000 dead or missing in Myanmar, in the country’s worst natural disaster.
The military junta at the time compounded the tragedy by deliberately blocking international aid and failing to provide adequate food, shelter or water for some 3.4 million survivors, an independent report subsequently concluded.
People shelter at a monastery in Sittwe, where they intend to wait out Cyclone Mocha. (Photo: AFP)